


re-start

by vl19scriptfic



Category: Killjoys (TV)
Genre: Gen, Male-Female Friendship, and havent posted it on here until now, because i'm a terrible procrastinator in every possible way, but anyway i wrote this pretty soon after the s2 finale, i didn't tag aneela but she's in this too, i swear these dumbasses are going to kill me one day, well at least my fanon version of her since we don't have much to go on this far
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 03:12:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8561389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vl19scriptfic/pseuds/vl19scriptfic
Summary: in which aneela is defeated and regains emotional capacity after being separated from the plasma, dutch deals with the immediate aftermath of bringing about aneela's downfall and we get a flashback to dutch and johnny's first meeting.





	

Dutch looked down into a dying face that matched her own and felt the last thing she’d ever expected to feel for Aneela- sympathy.

How odd it was, how backward and upside down, that the moment they’d all been reeling towards at the speed of a comet had come down to this wilting fragment of time. No loud crash, no bright light- nothing that would turn worlds across the universe, nothing that felt like it was equipped to follow everything they’d been through. Just this silent pocket of sadness, filled with only John, D’avin, Dutch and the dying girl who looked just like her, borne witness to by an eyeless sky. What a woefully dim star this victory would make.

Inside Aneela’s head, fear fought fear in a futile battle, stamina and sanity draining out of her with each drop of plasma that fell from the wound in her temple. She hadn’t known herself to be afraid for over two centuries. She’d forgotten what it felt like. She’d forgotten how to wish she remembered what it felt like.

The deadly rod of silver against Dutch’s palm pulled all the warmth out of her as she gripped it still, as if letting it drop to the ground would mean everything was over. It was not a reality, in hint or whole, that she could reconcile with the scene in front of her.

“Dutch-“

John’s voice was half bewildered surprise, half terror. A stunned D’avin stood beside him. She’d forgotten to tell them what she’d done. Or perhaps she hadn’t forgotten.

“You put the vaccinating agent on the tip,” John said in wonder.

Johnny was right, of course. He almost always was. And D’avin’s silence told Dutch that he understood what she’d done just as well. It was strange that silence should tell her so much, when what she’d truly expect to hear from both him and Johnny was a form of admonishment.

(“Dutch, you used the refined formula? We agreed we were going to keep that safe! That if you came out here and got sixed somehow, or ever, we’d use the vaccine to cure you! What would have happened if they’d turned you and we couldn’t bring you back?”)

They didn't say it. Dutch was glad they didn't say it. She was glad of their silence, not because they weren’t right, but because she didn’t think she could bear hearing that paralyzing, post-mature fear in their voices. She stared ahead at Aneela’s broken form, at what she’d done, and she felt how much the Jaqobis brothers loved her like a stab to the gut. She barely heard herself as she spoke.

“I thought it would make it faster. I didn’t- I didn’t realize I’d do this. She’s becoming herself again, isn’t she?”

“Something like it,” John replied. “It’s like… it’s like what you told me happened with Sabine. Her brain is just flooding at this point. It’s more than she’s been able to feel in the past 200 years.”

A strange and complicated and unidentifiable feeling pressed against the inside of Dutch’s throat. There were, after all this time, so many things she still didn’t understand about herself.

Tears swam in her eyes as she asked, “What happens now?”

Aneela’s eyes were losing their light already. She looked as nonthreatening as any of them had ever seen her. Not benevolent exactly, but with a pointed lack of malevolence that gave Dutch the oddest urge to reach out to her. And in that urge there was a smoldering speck of hatred-- hatred of Khlyen for what he’d done to her, hatred of Aneela for what she’d done to all of them, hatred of the Hullen for the role they had played in all of this, hatred of herself that came with a chest-twisting sympathy for everyone she’d ever killed. Aneela was another red box.

And Dutch herself was the only guilty one of them who could not assign an ounce of the weight on her shoulders to the living plasma that spanned out in a fanning circle around her latest victim. She was the only one of their devastating dynasty who didn’t bleed green. She almost wished she did.

\---------

(7 years ago)

The stun gun shook in the girl’s hands, so badly that she knew if she fired again she’d miss. She held it aloft anyway as the stranger across from her gripped his arm in shock.

“Ow! What the- hey, slow down!”

“What are you doing on my ship?” The girl’s voice was unsteady and she cursed herself inwardly. What was the point of running away if she couldn’t face what was ahead of her?

“I- uhh-“ he paused, glancing around, raising his hands in front of him. “Well, admittedly I was kinda trying to steal it. I can see that I’ve caused… an inconvenience. Won’t happen again."

“Get out.” She barely heard herself speak. Her wrist ached with the impact her arm had taken before she’d managed to slash the final guard’s throat and slip through the gate of the palace.

_Get out. Get out of here. He’ll come after you. Khlyen will be here any second. Run, Yalena, run._

“Sorry,” the stranger said, raising his eyebrows, clearly having gotten more than he bargained for. And she’d only shot him with a voltage charge. “I’m just gonna-“ He gestured to the open ramp behind him instead of finishing his sentence. If he was truly a thief, then his thievery skills could use work. He smiled again, placating in a half-serious way.

“Sorry again. I’ll-“

The girl cried out, pain twisting through the side of her chest, try as she might to fight the urge. The gun fell to the deck.

_Control your pain. Do not let it control you._

She pressed her lips together and willed it away as best she could, but her knees had already hit the floor. She was so damn tired.

“Hey.” She looked up as the stranger spoke slowly, standing much closer to her than he had been before. The gun was only inches away. Her hand crept towards it.

“Hey.” The stranger spoke again, and this time the girl looked up to see his face. If she could look this sharp a dagger at him and have him face her unscathed, only a knife or a bullet would do the trick. Perhaps it was for the best. His eyes were kind, and he had a brightness to him. It was a brightness the girl had abandoned long ago, and she hadn’t expected the relief that came with seeing it reflected in someone else.

“I’m John,” the stranger said, kneeling down gently to meet her glare. “John Jaqobis. I needed a ship and I saw this one, and I figured- well, I didn’t think anyone was on board. Half-assed plan, you know? I’ve never stolen anything before. Well, nothing this big. Guess I’m not great at it.”

_Called it._

The girl winced again as a spear of pain drove itself through her side. The stranger who called himself John bit his lip in sympathy.

“Someone hurt you, didn’t they?”

The girl nodded. There was no point in denying it. It was a strange scene- these two people who knew nothing about one another, one of them in a tattered wedding dress with six broken ribs and the other a rumpled wanderer seeking a vessel armed with nothing but a sideways grin and a steady habit of talking too much.

Khlyen. He could be paces away. He’d take her back to the palace, back through the gate, back to red boxes. And he’d make her pull a knife across her visitor’s throat before she went.

“You-“ the girl spoke through heavy breaths. The side of her chest burned. “You need to get out. He’ll-“

“Whoa, whoa, hang on,” John said, holding up his hands again. “He? Are you talking about the person who did this to you?”

“No, he didn't- the guards. It was the guards.” The girl shook her head. “I had to- I got away.”

“So you’re running away from someone.”

“Yeah, well, you are too.”

John looked surprised. “How’d you know that?”

The girl gritted her teeth as a new wire of pain flared inside her. “Lucky guess.”

“Fair enough. Do you-“ he paused, glancing behind him at the ramp, reflecting her fear of her mentor’s footsteps tapping against the metal. “Do you have anywhere you can go?”

When the girl didn’t answer, out of both pain and lack of a plausible response, John pressed on.

“You can’t fly your ship like this,” he said, and the girl looked up at him in surprise.

_Yalena, what are you thinking? Khlyen raised you. He kept you safe for all of these years. You leave now, and it’ll only haunt you. You leave now and he’ll never forgive you._

The girl cast a gaze beyond the ramp of the ship, out to where the gate of the palace gave way to the bridge and the courtyards. Home had only ever been one thing to her, and this was it.

“Hey,” John said again, reaching out a gentle hand. “I can get you out of here. No tricks, no- no whatever the hell you’re running away from, I promise. I’ll fly you wherever you want to go. You aren’t alone, okay?”

The girl’s eyes burned as she stared at the impossible person in front of her. “Yes I am.”

“Well, do you want to be?”

_Say yes. Say you want to be alone. Say it, because it’s not true. You’re strongest by yourself._

_Don’t run._

Bravely, as bravely as she’d ever done anything before, the girl shook her head no.

“Okay then,” John said. “It’s alright. Running is scary, it’s terrifying, I know. But it’s okay to run if you need to. We don’t have to stay here. We can just fly away and never look back. I can get you somewhere safe, somewhere whoever you’re running from won’t be able to find you. I know you have no reason to trust me. But do you trust me enough to let me do that?”

He meant it. From somewhere buried underneath all the pain Khlyen had caused her, she recognized her old self in the face of the person opposite her. Somehow it made the universe seem a little bigger.

She could only nod, still biting her tongue to steel away the pain in her ribs.

“Lucy, close ramp,” she managed to grit out, and the ship’s AI responded instantly.

John’s eyebrows quirked. “Lucy?”

“Computer system. Came with the ship.”

John’s eyes brightened. “Ooh! Hey, Lucy, I’m-“

The AI’s friendly voice sounded throughout the cargo bay. “John Jaqobis. I gathered. Welcome aboard.”

The girl couldn’t help but smile as John’s grin lit up his entire face.

“No offense,” she said, finding some of her fire again. “But we’re shit at this ‘running’ thing.”

John laughed and the already-loosening knot in the girl’s chest eased further as he said “Yeah, we kinda are.”

The girl laughed too- she couldn’t help it- and pain split through her side again. A small cry escaped her lips before she bit the sound away.

“Hey, hey- it’ll be okay.” John’s voice was softer still as he sat cautiously in front of her. “And I’m not gonna hurt you, I swear. You’re gonna be okay. You’re safe now.”

Somehow, despite all she’d been through, she believed it. This was a start.

—–---

(now)

It struck Dutch how separate she and Aneela were. How in her mind up until now, they’d been a type of singular entity, bound by death and Khlyen and matching reflections.

Dutch felt the well of sympathy again in her chest as the green pool around Aneela expanded. The dying girl’s eyes searched the sky wildly. For what, Dutch didn’t know. And she found that forward, right then, was the one direction she could not take a step. Aneela’s face was her own face, but it was also the face of the first person Dutch had ever killed, and the combined faces of every victim after that.

And still, Dutch couldn’t let her be alone.

She looked to Johnny, steady beside her, and finally let the green-covered silver dagger slip from her hand.

“Help her,” Dutch whispered to him.

The plea was as much for herself as it was for Aneela, the only way she could think of to ask this of Johnny. He nodded and gave Dutch’s shoulder a small squeeze- a silent agreement between them, one that made more sense in feeling than words- and walked towards Aneela’s shivering form.

Watching him kneel down next to her in the most gentle way possible, Dutch felt as though she was watching her own memories drawn out and played back in front of her. Aneela’s breathing was audible now, hitched and strained. Her lease on time was nearly up.

D’avin, still beside Dutch, wound his fingers through hers. She gripped his hand gladly. Their eyes were both fixed on the half-silhouette of Johnny and Aneela, and they were close enough to hear the low softness of Johnny’s voice.

“Hey,” he said, resting a hand on Aneela’s trembling arm. Despite the terror in her eyes, she didn’t pull away. Dutch understood why. “Don’t worry. You’re okay now. It’s over. You’re safe.”

Whatever Aneela said back to him, it was too soft for Dutch to hear. All she saw was a tear drop down Johnny’s cheek before her own vision blurred.

Later, Johnny would tell her Aneela’s fear had seemed to disappear in her final moments. It would hit her suddenly what Johnny must have felt as he’d so closely watched someone with a face identical to his best friend die. She’d ask him about it, he’d insist that he was okay, and she’d be able to tell just from how tightly he hugged her that he wasn’t. He and D’avin would stick closer by her side than ever before, planning their next move with the same motivated vigor as always, ever moving forward. There would be a hole in her chest that would fill, slowly, with the realization that she was not all that Khlyen had made her into. She’d been a part of a family without him this entire time.

And it all boiled down to one indisputable fact. She’d been brave enough, that one day seven years ago, to run.

Aneela might have been a red box, but she was the last. Perhaps this, again, was a start.


End file.
